hello

Phil, contended lines is not a myth that is emerging, it’s already well established.

Technically you are correct that contention as experienced with mass-market broadband in the UK today is a product of digital timeshare occurring beyond the local loop.

I did raise this with SpencerK and his explanation was convincing, to paraphrase:

People are familiar with their phone lines and insofaras most folks think/care/understand about the reasons behind the limitations of the digital services they receive today, the phone line is were broadband comes from.

This is no different from asking the basic question of any connectivity, e.g.

FTTH in one direction, so where is the other end.

People aren’t actually interested in the differences between local loop, middle miles, internet peering - its the fitness of purpose of service that matters.

Incidentally, why FTTH is important is to permanently put to rest concerns about the basic network infrastructure being able to delivers digital services fit for purpose.

Once that is achieved then we can all get on with using the tech without having to have these conversations - network building is an inconvenient necessity after all

I would contend (sic) that whilst it is technically true that everyone can have FTTH today, if prepared to pay BT’s fascinating rates of Excess Construction Charges, the factor of affordability is equally important.

FTTH as part of the pureglass path (www.pureglass.eu e.g.) provides the technical means to open the taps on the exaflood and thereby removes the technical copper figleaf used today to jjustify commercial considerations allowing digital gatekeepers to restrict those taps to a drip of data - this is an incumbent supply-side problem.

As regards samknows and ofcom, it always help to understand commercial relationships when assessing the merits of any information provider.

William, you are right on target re the need to actually capture data consistently.

The other factor to consider is the time of day each test is done as contended lines mean that the worst performance will be seen when the kids come home from school til bedtime.

Also worth noting that samknows are in bed with ofcom http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ofcom_and_samknows

and when you click on the link it lists providers offering you up to 20 meg. same on think broadband site. Yup, we’ve got adsl, but it is often 0.3 download. Neighbours had it too, for about 2 months out of the 12, the rest it was broken. Yes our neighbours and us are on our fibre/wifi network now, but does that mean I can’t comment on this blog? I am trying to get the correct facts on the maps. I think you can help Phil, because you are good at facts. Just putting a number into a checker isn’t getting the facts, because the wrong data is in there to start with. We need real people checking these maps.

Just checked my phone number and postcode on the samknows checker. It says adsl2max is available in my area. That is totally inaccurate, our exchange is adsl which means ’up to 8meg’ and we can’t get a meg despite engineer visits and my neighbours are on dial up. So all the maps are inaccurate, possibly because they use data from BT. Are they still using the old marconi database that conned the last government into believing we all had access to broadband?

I think its a joke too, but unless we get everyone to prove its wrong the policy makers will fall for it. If we are to have a map it has to be correct. Thanks William.

Not seen much activity here lately. One little job the champions could do is check out the map here: http://data.broadbandcumbria.com/maps/map-current-cumbria-broadband-speeds-bt-infrastructure/ and go over their own area of it to check for accuracy. I think it is grossly over estimating the speeds myself but would love to hear what others think. Just zoom in on your area and click and it will tell you. Post what you find here? ta.